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Women in Law Enforcement

This essay will analyze the relation of women to law enforcement. Even though women make up more than 51 percent of the American population, their representation on the police forces, the first line of law enforcement, usually hovers around 10 percent. The primary challenge of this essay will be to examine the possible reasons for this inequity. It will begin with a historical overview. Then we shall examine women in the police and patrol agencies around the United States. This will be followed by a brief analysis of women in other aspects of law enforcement -- making the laws, prosecuting the laws, and judging the laws.

Throughout European history up until the Early 20th Century, the role of policing society, preserving order, enforcing the laws, and arresting those who break the laws, was considered to be an ordained male responsibility. However, the continuance of one of the oldest crimes -- prostitution -- was seen as a major social problem and one that needed police supervision.

The French had developed a special unit called the police des moeurs, to regulate female prostitutes and the suspected premises involved. As Emsley points out

Recognizing the difficulties which could arise if policemen alone were required to arrest and hold women in custody, possibly even to search them, women began to be employed in police stations specifically to deal with female suspects (Emsley, 1999, 102).

This was the tradition that was utilized throughout the United States and one which remained until 1909 in Los Angeles when a social worker/suffragette named Alice Stebbins Wells sent a petition to the City Council urging that the City establish a program of policewomen. On September 12, 1910, according to Los Angeles city records, Mrs. Wells was named as America's first policewoman with arrest powers (L.A. Almanac Online).

Among her gear for the first day was a policeman's badge. One of the benefits of being a Los Ange...

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Women in Law Enforcement. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:46, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1686692.html